embrace Remo, and Patrick got up and walked over to Lucy and Alessa. He smiled at the child and asked, “Was Santa good to you this year?”
She beamed at him, wearing her new jeans and sweater. Then she rolled her eyes. “Yes, Remo and Alessa were very good to me,” she chirped. “I got a lot of great new clothes.”
Patrick laughed at her mature answer and turned to greet Alessa. Hannah, too, finally acknowledged her daughter-in-law, but her greeting was mechanical, lacking in the warmth and love that her husband was so generous with. Alessa wished they had been closer. She wondered why the woman didn’t like her. She knew Hannah wasn’t happy that Remo had chosen her as his wife but hoped she could see that her son wasn’t suffering because of Alessa’s past.
Having to pretend that everything was fine between them gnawed at Alessa. Hannah made no bones about disliking her daughter-in-law and persistently treated her as if she were poop stuck on the bottom of her shoe, smelly poop that wouldn’t come off. Hannah’s hostility was taking its toll on Alessa. She had been the more gracious of the two, as Remo had wanted her to be, but it occurred to Alessa that no one was expecting the same from Hannah. She could get away with behaving like an unreasonable bitch.
After a lavish Christmas dinner, Hannah announced that she wanted to take pictures by the decorated tree in the study. All the guests moved in and milled about, refreshing their drinks at the bar and chatting excitedly.
“Let’s get started,” Hannah said. “First, I want to take a picture with only the family in it.”
As Alessa and Lucy spontaneously stepped forward for the picture, Hannah looked over and said pointedly, “Remo, come over here, handsome. I want to get one with just the family.”
Remo, who had been engrossed in conversation with one of Patrick’s friends until his mother called out to him, hadn’t noticed how Alessa and Lucy had stopped in their tracks when excluded from the family photo.
Standing next to his mother, Remo called out, “Alessa and Lucy, come on and join us.”
They both stayed where they were, as if their feet had been bolted to the ground.
“Come on, honey,” Hannah sweetly stated to her son. “Let’s get one with the three of us.”
Oblivious to what had transpired minutes ago, Remo smiled for the camera and, after the family photo was taken, joined one of his parents’ neighbors at the bar.
At this point, Alessa and Lucy saw one of Hannah’s friends approaching them. Alessa knew her to be a nice woman who was the mother of eight kids. So, acceptance came naturally to her.
“Don’t worry about Hannah,” she whispered to Alessa. “Someday, she’ll come around. And if she doesn’t, well, then, from what I’ve seen, that’s her loss.”
Her words made Alessa feel less alone in the room full of people. She thanked the woman and moved to the bar to be near Remo. She got a glass of wine for herself, and Remo made Lucy a Shirley Temple. The wine helped Alessa relax a little, but now being in the same room as her mother-in-law was like a thorn in her side. She was eager to love both of Remo’s parents but had understood that Hannah wouldn’t give her an inch. It was a sad realization for her because she wanted nothing more than Remo’s happiness. If only his mother could see they both wanted the same thing. Alessa couldn’t understand Hannah’s veiled hostility toward her, wondering, occasionally, if she wasn’t plain jealous of her daughter-in-law, the woman with whom she now had to share Remo’s love and attention. It was a sick thought, she felt, but couldn’t reject it entirely whenever she saw Hannah fall all over Remo.
As Alessa and Remo made their way through the crowd of guests, stopping to greet and chat with some, she felt numb. Standing within earshot of Hannah, she overheard her bragging to her friends about how Remo had opened the Outside Inn.
“Isn’t the name creative?” Hannah remarked. “My son really has a gift. Patrick and I are so proud of him.”
Alessa’s stomach flip-flopped. She wanted to stomp on her mother-in-law for deliberately leaving her out of the picture altogether. Not that she needed credit for what she’d done. But Hannah’s refusal to even consider the possibility of Alessa’s contribution to something she was so proud of infuriated her. Remo’s mother made Alessa feel the way she used to as a child—unloved, used, and abused. No one seemed to have noticed, and everyone was going about their evening, as though it were all normal.
For Alessa, the hours that passed seemed like an entire week, and it was a relief to her when Remo asked if she was ready to go home. Lucy had fallen asleep on one of the large leather sofas in the study. Remo hugged his parents goodbye. Turning to embrace Alessa, Patrick sensed from her body language and her expression that something had upset her deeply. He wondered what he had missed but suspected Hannah had something to do with it. Patrick couldn’t understand why his wife disliked Alessa so intensely. He knew she was protective of Remo, but in all fairness, he had to acknowledge that her stubbornness in refusing to accept Alessa as a member of their family was beyond reason and cruel.
